Kurt, the original shot is very flat, with no real contrast. When this is addressed, the image starts to show its real potential, as well as the texture in the wall behind, which will convert to a nice noisy bacjground, which then gives you a great place to start with mono.

Take a look at the mod of the original, its really pullin in the levels sliders to meet the graph, and sharpening.

W

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I should have given more details, I'm sorry. I did a bit of work on the colour before converting to b&w - a Levels adjustment to broaden the tonal range, plus added brightness and contrast. (In colour as you uploaded I'm not convinced that it needs it, I like the misty, ghostly, pastel feel. This doesn't need realism. But b&w does need it.)

Then as John surmised, Nik Silver Efex, and I'm afraid I used a short cut to start with. I went to the Film Noir 1 preset, which is fairly extreme in effect, particularly contrast and grain; but I increased grain from 92 to 500 per pixel, did away with the preset burned edge and border, reduced Brightness and Contrast by about 10% each and added about 5% Structure.

Then I remember I had a look at different film types, and I think I may have used Ilford PAN F Plus 50, but still took the grain setting back up to 500.

I made a quick final Levels tweak after that.

The grain is there in the image, it comes from the texture of the paper used as background for the display,
Moira

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